Red wine extract gives fruit a new lease of life

By Andy Coghlan

THE contents of your fruit bowl could soon stay fresh a lot longer – thanks to a substance hailed as one of the health-giving components of red wine.

Dipping apples in a solution of trans-resveratrol, an antioxidant found in grapes, extended their shelf life from two weeks to three months. Similarly dipped grapes fared less well, but their shelf life still doubled to two weeks.

The idea came from a hunch. Ángel Gonzalez Ureña’s team at Complutense University in Madrid had shown that trans-resveratrol could kill troublesome fungi on fruit. And it was already known to combat other …

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